Happyness is Camping... where you're not suppossed to!
Stay Wild
I plopped another log on the fire.
Sparks rose up into the dark sky and became stars.
My five-year-old son, Camper, slept in the driftwood fort
we built earlier in the day.
Camper dreamt about the Star Wars comic books he fell asleep listening to. Alien rebels in a galaxy far, far away fighting for independence and a thing called “the force.”
Hard to relate.
I puffed my pipe, chugged a tall can of Olympia and waited.
There he came fumbling & giggling out of the forest, David “Dickbird” Neevel. The most adventurous man I know. Once Dickbird found out we were camping illegally at Short Sands, he rode his motorcycle lightly packed with surf and camp gear to bask in the glory of the cove with us.
It was Saturday night. It wasn't raining, nobody was there, the sky was totally clear, the air was warm, and the fucking milky way was cranked up to full blast! We shot roman candles into the sky and watched the fireballs go out in the waves we’d surf in the morning. We had the loudest, fullest laughs anyone in the whole galaxy had that night. We were laughing with life the way birds sing with the wind.
In the morning the State Park Ranger woke us up. The Ranger said we had to leave or he’d ticket us. He asked, “Why did you camp here? It’s illegal.” We looked at each other silently laughing before the truth came out of Dickbird. “We didn't have anywhere better to stay.”
Story by Justin “Scrappers” Morrison
Photos by David "Dickbird" Neevel